Sam’s Story: Week 28

Well, it was a big week this time around, so let’s approach this update by splitting this update into chapters. I’ll even give each chapter a cute title.

Chapter 1: I, Samantha Madigan, Heartily Endorse this Product or Event

Let’s face it: this kid is cute. My mother often uses the word “photogenic” to describe Sam, and I used to disagree with her before I looked the word up and figured out that she wasn’t trying to claim that Sam synthesized carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water using light as an energy source. She was, in fact, telling us that Sam took pictures really good. Furthermore, grandma has been urging us to take Sam to one of those modeling agencies that specialize in kids and babies. I had assumed the kids pictured in parenting magazines and catalogs were grown in a vat somewhere, but evidently they belong to people just like us. And they’ll pay you money to take pictures of your kid.

So taking this advice, Geralyn found an ad in the paper sandwiched between a call for topless dancers (no experience necessary, training provided) and a “for sale” notice for an ’83 Honda Civic (runs fine, $4000 O.B.O.). She made an appointment for Monday afternoon and took Sam in.

I have to admit to a certain amount of trepidation over this. Ger and I agreed under absolutely no circumstances would she give them any money or sign anything. Still, I kept envisioning a cold, stone room without any decoration at all except for one picture of Barney taped to the wall as an afterthought. Except Barney would have this certain look in his plastic, googly eye and a certain tilt to his giant foam head as if to say “Come on in, kiddies. Come on in FOREVER AND ABANDON ALL HOPE! Hyuh hyuh hyuh!” There would also be a stern looking man in a grey suit sitting behind a government-grade desk, an intermittent shadow from the ceiling fan overhead sliding across his bald head. He would be wearing a monocle for some reason.

“Welcome to Herr Himmler’s Laborahhh… Talent Agency,” he’d say through smiling teeth. “Please place ze specimin on ze table. Schnell!”

Fortunately, Geralyn reported that evening that the lady she met with was nice, they wanted no money from us at this point, and no one had been transformed into a soulless, goose-stepping supersoldier of the fourth Reich. Well, at least not that she saw. Apparently the deal is that they put Sam in their files, and if they get a request for someone like her they call us and we go to the audition. If Sam gets the part, the talent agency gets a 20% commission. Kind of high, I know, but we’re not talking about big bucks here and we’re really only in it for the bragging rights –for which their commission is only 10%.

The only thing resembling a catch is that we will need to go to the auditions with headshots of Sam. They gave Ger a reference for someone who does this kind of photography, but the going rate was like $185. That’s way too much, and we figure we’ll take our chances with either our own camera or a cheaper portrait studio. More on that in Chapter 3 below.

Chapter 2: Fun with Photoshop

Last week I posted this picture of Geralyn feeing Samantha:

Looking at that picuture, most gamers might find something familiar about it. Especially gamers who have played “first person shooters” like Doom or Half-Life. Inspired by my inspiration, I opened up Photoshop and completed the picture:

If you don’t get it, don’t worry. You’re just not cool.

Chapter 3: Asleep at Wal-Mart

So we decided to get Sam’s picture taken by someone besides us with a little camera and waving toys around like an idiot. We wanted someone with a big camera and waving toys around like an idiot. Since we didn’t want to spend a lot of money, we went to the new Wal-Mart down the street and took them up on a grand opening special they were running in their portrait studio.

Unfortunately, despite a couple of good solid naps preceding the visit, Sam began to caterwaul the second we put her in front of the camera. The grumpy, minimum-wage-earning “photographer” put up a decent pretense of patience for a bit, but soon it was clear that this wasn’t going to work and soon we’d be encroaching on her next appointment’s camera time. So we said we’d walk around the store with her for a bit and come back.

So we put Sam in her car seat and put the car seat on a shopping cart and started to wind through the Cheapest Place On Earth. Let me make clear what a big deal this was by pointing out that we both hate Wal-Mart. Not for sex discrimination or putting mom-and-pop stores out of business. Mom and Pop should suck it up and look up “free market” in that old Encyclopedia Britannica they bought from that traveling salesman the year them tornados wrecked up the Hendersons’ milking barn. Ayup.

No, we hate Wal-Mart for a much more bourgeois reason: the people. Specifically, the people who knock stuff off displays and leave it on the floor, the people who put mud flaps for their truck on layaway, and the people who drag around screaming little children dressed in Budweiser tee-shirts. Yes, yes, we’re snobs. We’ve accepted that. You should, too.

The other ingredient in this recipe for misery was trying to keep Sam asleep while the booming Voice of God spoke to us over the store’s PA system. A typical moment went like this:

Jamie: Let’s go in here to the yarn section. The yarn section has to be quiet, right?

THE VOICE OF GOD: ATTENTION SHOPPERS! DID YOU KNOW THAT WAL-MART OFFERS A COMPLETE LINE OF PISSING CALVIN DECALS FOR THE BACK WINDOW OF YOUR PICKUP TRUCK? VISIT OUR AUTOMOTIVE DEPARTMENT TODAY AND CHOOSE FROM CALVIN PISSING TO THE LEFT OR CALVIN PISSING TO THE RIGHT. THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING WAL-MART.

Jamie: [cowering behind a pile of yarn] What the hell was that?

Amazingly, Sam slept through all this for a solid 40 minutes and awoke in a much better mood. We took her back to the portrait studio and managed to get a number of poses out of her before she started to melt down again and cry:

We spent about $50 on a package including some nice, larger sized prints and the digital copies above. Then we got out of there, put the pissing Calvin decal on the back of our truck, and went home.

Chapter 4: The Bringing of the Cute

And now, this week’s non-Wal-Mart pictures:

You’ll notice that Sam is getting pretty good at sitting up, though she still topples over if she doesn’t have any support. We’ve been providing motivation in the form of her tower toy thingie, which she loves. Specifically, she loves to knock it over. She likes it so much that she’ll momentarily forget that she’s still largely immobile, and will lurch for it and do a spectacular face plant if you set just outside her reach. Not that I did that more than a few times.

Finally, the outdoor shots are from a park where Geralyn’s play group met this week. Like many of the parks that pepper our little corner of San Diego, it’s equipped with awesome equipment and facilities that I can’t wait for Sam to grow into. One of them (not sure if it’s the one in these pics or not) has jungle gyms shaped like little ships. I long for the day I can get Sam up in one of those and teach her how to scream “AAARRRRG!” like a pirate.

Chapter 5: The Babysitter, the Sushi, and the Six Foot Angry Clown Bong

This week we took a big step as parents: we hired a babysitter. While the idea of abandoning our child to a stranger caused us some concern, we also wanted to get the heck out of the house for a few hours and have some time to ourselves. So Geralyn hunted for a baby sitter.

Unfortunately, as I reported earlier, most of the candidates we got were 12 or 13 years old, with ads that read something like this:

Hi, I’m Mandy. I’m 13 years old and I’m a cutter. That means I use knives and letter openers to carve intricate patterns in my own flesh to ease my suffering. Because life is suffering. I am very dependable and can’t wait to meet your child!

So instead of some Goth teenage Anne Rice wannabe, we went with an 18 year old college student who came with two solid recommendations by other parents in Ger’s playgroup. Things didn’t start off too well, though, when the babysitter failed to actually show up to sit the baby. When she was 40 minutes late Geralyn called her. We both had images of the babysitter taking a huge hit off a six foot angry clown bong right before answering the phone.

We were wrong about the bong thing, fortunately. The babysitter apologized profusely and was at our house within minutes (she lives just up the street). So we showed her around, handed off Samantha (who started crying immediately), promised to be back around 8:00, and headed out the door.

We had sushi. We had wine. We went for a leisurely walk around the park. We got dessert at the sweets shop next to the park. It was great.

When we pulled back into our driveway at 7:55, though, things got scary. We noticed from the street that the house was dark. That’s okay, we thought. Maybe Sam was taking a nap or they were watching TV with the lights off. When we came inside, the downstairs was dark and silent. Okay, so maybe they’re upstairs. So we go upstairs and the upstairs is dark and silent, too.

At this point, panic started to kick in. The house was dark and empty except for the cat and he wasn’t talking. I started to shout out to the babysitter in the hopes that she’d somehow gotten stuck in a closet or couldn’t just figure out how to work the light switch. No answer. We left our baby with a stranger and now they’re both gone and we’ve got nothing but a plastic cup sticky with the remains of Ger’s ice cream desert.

Geralyn ran downstairs and grabbed the phone while I decided to check the back yard before giving in to panic entirely. Just as I was coming in from the back yard the babysitter comes in through the front door, Samantha sitting in her arms and covered in a blanket against the evening chill. The babysitter explained that Sam wouldn’t stop crying until she had taken her for a short walk around the block.

At that point I realized how scared –really, truly scared– I had been, and how grateful I was that the baby sitter had not absconded to Mexico with Sam. So we took Sam, paid the babysitter, and thanked her for her help. In retrospect taking Sam for a walk was a perfectly fine thing to do. We (and the babysitter) live in a nice neighborhood and if it calmed Sam down then I would have been all for it. So I don’t blame the babysitter for any misdeed there.

But man, still. It was frightening to come home and not find her there.

See you next week.